The present invention relates to a bill discriminating apparatus. In this specification and the claims, the term "bill" is referred to a paper money and the like valuable sheet material.
Generally, automatic vending machines and money exchangers are provided with a bill discriminating unit for judging whether or not bills inserted are genuine. Such machines further include a bill stacker unit for stacking only accepted genuine bills in it. To stack bills this kind of bill discriminating unit adopts one of two stacking fashions; an up-stacking fashion and a down-stacking fashion. In the former, bills, inserted from a lower insert slot, are judged by the bill discriminating unit whether or not they are genuine, and accepted genuine bills are then upwardly transported for stacking them above the discriminating unit . On the other hand, in the latter fashion, bills, inserted from an upper insert slot, are also judged by the bill discriminating unit to discriminate genuine bills from counterfeit ones, and accepted genuine bills are then downwardly conveyed for stacking them below the discriminating unit. Users may select one of the two fashions considering the conditions of use, and a bill discriminating apparatus of the selected fashion is incorporated into the automatic vending machine.
However, in the case where after such a selection, the bill discriminating apparatus should be changed to the other fashion, the whole bill discriminating apparatus must be changed to a bill discriminating apparatus of the other fashion.